Prince’s recent marketing strategies have been impossible to miss. I wrote about it, it made the news everywhere, bloggers worldwide wrote about it. It’s huge. Turns out that the reviews of the music have been mixed. Pitchfork describes the problem with reviewing a Prince CD thus:

We always expect too much of Prince, because it’s difficult to accept that somebody who made records as astonishing as he did in the 1980s could repeat himself as egregiously as he has for the past 15 years or so. He hasn’t been doing r&b-by-numbers or rock-by-numbers, which is why he gets away with it; he’s just been doing Prince-by-numbers. And yes, he still brings it live. But his albums used to send everyone scrambling to catch up; now they’re self-evidently whatever he deigns to knock out.

Pitchfork was pretty lukewarm on the CD, but I’m digging it.

What’s great about this CD is how masterful Prince’s writing is. He is able to combine so many styles/genres into something that sounds like Prince. He sums up decades of R&B, drops in some sounds from 1960s surf/pop records, uses cats from the greatest funk bands of the 1960s and 1970s who add even more depth, and on and on. In particular, I notice:

• “Planet Earth” has a distinctly mainstream 1960s style to it; reminds me of the 5th Dimension. He takes such a simple melodic fragment (listen to the piano at the beginning) and builds a really strong piece of music out of it. It’s lydian, and if George Russell has anything to say about it, this is why the verse is so resolved. And it’s also why contrast from the chorus has so much power. The middle section of this tune is where I hear the 5th Dimension most strongly.
• “Guitar” is cute. I remember much talk about Prince being the heir to Hendrix. If that’s the case then this doesn’t really do the lineage much justice, even though he plays great. But it’s cute nevertheless.
• “Somewhere Here on Earth” again has a serious 5th Dimension sort of orchestration, but he adds a healthy dose of the Stylistics to this. Truthfully, the first phrase reminds me so much of Antony Hegerty on Bjork’s Volta (on “The Dull Flame of Desire” in particular) that I have a hard time keeping the beginning of this tune straight. Christian Scott is the trumpet player, playing with a harmon mute, giving a big nod to Miles. I worked with Christian last year on Grace Kelly‘s CD Every Road I Walked.
• “The One You Wanna C” has that groovy guitar sound, like a strat going through a bassman with a bunch of tremelo on it or something – perhaps the guitar nuts can weigh in on this? But the tune itself is again, pretty cute.
• In “All the Midnights in the World,” Prince makes a bunch of odd cultural references: Zu Zu’s pedals from A Wonderful Life, Happy Days, etc. I find this a bit odd.
• The bass sound on “Chelsea Rodgers” is fantastic. The horns are unbelievable [thus spake The Godfather of Soul, “Maceo! Maceo! Blow your horn! Maceo!”]. Even though Larry Graham gets no credit for the bass playing on this – because it isn’t him – it’s so clear that without his playing from the 1970s this tune couldn’t exist. I think about the Sly Stone record Fresh on which Sly played some serious bass, having benefited from years of Total Larry Graham Immersion.
• “Lion of Judah” is fascinating to me because I love reggae (which this isn’t) and I love Ethiopia (which this isn’t about or from) and I love Ethiopian music (which this isn’t). But the Lion of Judah plays so prominently in all three of these things, I’m wondering what’s up.
• The middle section of “Revelation” is another fine example of how Prince’s writing can absorb anything. I hear Frank Zappa so clearly in the middle section – “what can we use if we try?” etc. reminds me of Inca Roads-era Zappa. Also, following “Lion of Judah” with a tune that has some reggae shuffle refrences isn’t such a bad thing. The bass sound is amazing.

I think this CD is so very worth a listen or two or three or more. The tunes are pop tunes, not very threatening, but have quite a lot of depth to them compositionally, if you give them a chance. Listen to how the music supports his lyrical ideas, and then dump the lyrics and pay attention to the music. He’s a master, no question.

Rick